It’s just four weeks until Apple launches this year’s World Wide Developers Conference on June 10, and reveals the software that will power iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and Macs—the final software will go on public beta in July and general release in September, it’s thought. There have already been widespread rumors that AI will feature in a big way. And now, a new report says that some of the AI might come from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the discussions between Google and Apple, to put the Gemini chatbot on the iPhone are still ongoing but haven’t led to an agreement. But, Gurman says, “Apple Inc. has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the startup’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence features to its devices.”
The perception is that Apple is behind in the race to bring AI to the phone, not least since the Samsung Galaxy S24 series introduced Galaxy AI to great acclaim back in January.
And, as Gurman puts it, “Apple plans to make a splash in the artificial intelligence world in June.” And although no deal has yet been done with Open AI, it’s thought that negotiations have intensified.
Generative AI is complex and expensive and though Apple has its own AI features in train to be announced, it’s thought that to recapture the high ground, Apple wants to work with an outside organization to bring greater power more quickly.
And AI is one of the reasons Apple has just announced its M4 chip, much sooner than most people had expected, because M4 has a more powerful neural engine, designed to work well with AI. The M4 chip is available from May 15, in the new iPad Pro.
Working with OpenAI has its own challenges, not least because Apple is obsessive about privacy, and LLMs like the ones ChatGPT uses require so much processing power that doing everything on-device is challenging.
But Apple will “run some of its upcoming artificial intelligence features via data centers equipped with its own in-house processors.”
All of which may have contributed to Apple CEO Tim Cook claiming on the recent Apple earnings call that Apple will have the edge in AI. That’s something it needs to do, to catch up.
“We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era,” Cook said.
How that will materialize will become evident in the coming weeks.
